British-Irish comedian Jimmy Carr has sparked uproar for his joke on Europe’s traveller communities, whose members were persecuted during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, in his Netflix stand up special.
Clips of the controversial comment made during the Netflix special titled ‘His Dark Material’ has been widely circulated on social media.
Carr during the special said, “When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one talks about that because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.”
Carr’s comment was a reference to the genocide of the Roma and Sinti people, also referred to as Gypsies, at the hands of Nazi’s between 1933 and 1945 which came to be known as the ‘Forgotten Holocaust’.
A statement from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said, “We are absolutely appalled by Jimmy Carr's commentary on the persecution Roma and Sinti suffered under Nazi oppression, and horrified that peals of laughter followed his remarks. Hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti have suffered prejudice, forced labour, sterilisation and mass murder simply because of their identity - these are not experiences to mock.”
Many members of the public, including UK MP Nadia Whittome, have called on Netflix for the removal of the special from its platform.
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